JAGANAS, PLOVERS 
AND GULLS 
This large group of water birds includes a number of important and 
highly diverse families: the jacanas of tropical America; the oyster-catchers 
found along the sea beaches of almost every ocean; the plover, lapwings, 
turnstones and surf-birds of cosmopolitan distribution; the snipe, wood¬ 
cock, curlews, killdeer and sandpipers, inhabiting suitable localities from 
Ireland to Japan; the long-legged, curved-beaked avocets and stilts, also 
cosmopolitan; the phalaropes found on the open oceans of the Northern 
Hemisphere; the crab-eating plovers of India, Arabia and East Africa; the 
thick-knees of world-wide distribution; the swallow-like pratinocles and the 
fast-running coursers of the Old World; the quail-like seed-snipe, that are 
strict vegetarians and are confined to desolate areas of Peru and Chile; 
the snow white, pigeon-like sheath-bills of the Antarctic; the skuas and 
jaegers who live exclusively by preying upon other gulls and may be seen 
on every ocean; the gulls and far-flying terns familiar to travellers on every 
body of salt-water; and the wave-shearing skimmers of America, Africa and 
South Asia. 
Many members of this group are curious in their habits. For example 
there are the turnstones, who turn over shells and pebbles in search of 
crustaceans; the oyster-catchers, who force open the shells of clams and 
oysters with their strong knife-like bills; the phalaropes, who reverse the 
usual domestic relations of birds and relegate all courtship to the more 
beautiful female, the drab male being left with the burden of homemaking; 
the woodcocks, famous game birds, who carry their young on the wing; 
and the coursers, who suddenly squat when they sense danger, and render 
themselves invisible by blending into the surrounding landscape. 
Jacanas: Mexican Jacana. 
Plovers: Crocodile Birds. 
Gulls: Herring Gulls. 
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